


Let Them Know A Better Day

by PanBoleyn



Series: The Iron Gauntlet and the Silk Glove [7]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Robert's Rebellion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 02:12:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1922826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Robert's Rebellion rages, five mothers and their children hang in the balance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Them Know A Better Day

Lyanna has always loved songs and tales, but even as a child she wondered about the people behind them. Wondered if the pretty words were the truth, or just the prettiest version of it. What would Florian and Jonquil say if they heard the song they’ve become?

What will Lyanna say of her own tale?

Because she knows that’s what they’ll make of this, of Robert’s Rebellion. They’ll make it Robert and Rhaegar fighting for her, for her love. Never mind that Robert wanted to possess, and Rhaegar just wanted his Visenya. Never mind that Lyanna had not wanted either of them.

Oh, Rhaegar was beautiful to look at, and Robert appealing in his own way, but…

She had not wanted Robert because he would not be true to her, because he claimed to love her but he didn’t know her. So why would she love a man who publicly shamed his own wife to honor her? If honor it was; Rhaegar told her he did it in respect of her valor as the Knight of the Laughing Tree, but Lyanna is skeptical of that. For all she knows he was laughing at her, or charming her, thinking her tears at his song meant something.

It had been herself she cried for, for the sorrow of a cage. And Rhaegar had promised to free her from it. Just do this one thing for him, and he would help her be free. A child, a Visenya for his Aegon and Rhaenys, she need do nothing but bear the babe, and he would help her get to anywhere she might wish.

So she had taken his hand. Brandon would have done the same thing, had he been a maid, she told herself at the thought of her family’s fury. Even now she believes that, even knowing…

They do not know that she knows, of course. They don’t think she heard Gerold Hightower telling Rhaegar what had transpired. They have told her that Robert and her family have risen up with Jon Arryn in rebellion, as if that is all she need know.

But she heard Hightower telling Rhaegar how her father burned alive in his armor, how her brother strangled himself trying to reach him. How the Mad King keeps Princess Elia, Princess Rhaenys, and Prince Aegon locked up so that the Martell brothers are forced to pledge Dorne to his cause.

And so Lyanna rests a hand on the curve of her stomach and tells the child she wasn’t supposed to care about that they will not serve its father’s plan. Somehow.

\---

Varys comes to her the day Aerys sends Rhaella and little Viserys to Dragonstone. One would think that Elia and her children would be sent away too, for the safety of the dynasty Aerys is so proud of, but he knows that without them Dorne will not fight for him. And so she and Rhaenys and Aegon must stay where they are, all but confined to quarters.

She wonders if Rhaegar’s prophecy would still have meant so much to him if he had known where it would lead them all. She would like to think that it wouldn’t, but she knows better, doesn’t she? At least, she supposes, she wasnt shamed and betrayed for the sake of lust. Oh, Rhaegar wants the wolf girl, but he thinks too highly of himself to succumb to desire. Elia is no fool, so she can put together the pieces and work out that this is all about that stupid prophecy.

She can bear no more children without it killing her, and likely the babe would not survive either. Should she be grateful that her husband chooses to find another woman rather than decide her own death is a price he’s willing to pay? Perhaps she would, dishonor and all, if he hadn’t done it in such a foolish way as to ensure that all of them will pay a high price for his actions.

And so when Varys comes to her, she agrees to his plan. How he knows her father was a d’Altari and just what the d’Altaris are she isn’t sure - but perhaps this is why she became Rhaegar’s wife in the first place. (Or perhaps not; if Aerys knew she was a dragon herself, in a way, would he insult her and her daughter for their dirty blood as he does?) She does not want to choose her son over her daughter, but she knows Varys cannot smuggle them all out, not without being noticed. If she must choose, then better one child safe than both in danger, and Aegon is so young that the babe Varys finds can replace him. He claims he found the boy in a brothel, the son of a young whore from Lys, bought from the proprietor for a few casks of Arbor Gold to sell to his patrons.

Lys, and no wonder, the babe looks Valyrian enough.

So she wraps him in Aegon’s blankets and sees her boy shrouded in humble roughspun, sent away to somewhere in Essos. Lorath, she hopes, but probably not - Varys would think that too obvious, as Elia’s Lorathi heritage is known enough.

She is with the boy when Tywin Lannister’s men scale the walls of Maegor’s Holdfast, with him and not with her daughter because Rhaenys and her septa (where is Lemore?) are fleeing, dressed as servants, and all Elia can do is hope, when the Mountain dashes the poor decoy boy’s head against a wall, when he forces her to the ground with gore-covered hands, that both of her children are safe.

\---

She had loved Brandon. Brandon with his intense grey eyes and wicked smile, the wildness in him so different from her own studied calm. But Catelyn Tully always does her duty, so she stands in Riverrun’s sept as her dead betrothed’s brother wraps her in his colors. Eddard Stark is aloof but polite enough, asking her father’s permission to kneel in the godswood after the ceremony, seeking his gods’ blessing on their marriage. In a quiet voice he asks Catelyn to come with her, and after a moment she agrees. The godswood here is a place for play and quiet moments, not for worship, but her husband kneels before the oak tree at its center like it’s one of the weirwoods of his home, head bowed in prayer. And Catelyn kneels with him, caught by the moment, if not by any presence of the divine.

Because it occurs to her now, though she has lost and grieved for a betrothed, her new husband has lost so much more. And his cool kiss, she thinks now, held as much fear and uncertainty as the awkwardness of not knowing each other. She takes his hand there in a godswood that means something to him that it never can to her, for all it’s her home, and thinks that she could have a worse fate than him.

Robert Baratheon picks her up and carries her to her bedchamber when she’s still in her shift, laughing and saying he’d promised Ned they wouldn’t strip her naked. They only have that single night, awkward and unsure, and he kisses her neck like he thinks that will elicit some strong response (what woman taught him that?). But it is enough, and her stomach swells as the war rages, and her boy is born the day they hear of the Trident. Robb has Tully-red hair and Tully-blue eyes, but he is a Stark of Winterfell, his father’s heir, no matter what rumor whispers of another heir, of his father’s betrothal in the days when he was a mere second son.

She travels to Winterfell when the war ends, only to find that her husband has beaten her there, having taken ship from King’s Landing so he could inter the bones of his father, brother, and sister. She finds that the nursery where Robb should be alone with his wet nurse is already occupied by a half-brother. An older half-brother, a bastard boy named Jon Snow who is less a bastard than some might say, because betrothals are not marriages but they are something. And Jon Snow is the very image of a Stark.

Ned will not send the boy away and a wife’s duty is to obey, so Catelyn grinds her teeth and pretends to acceptance as the boys learn to crawl and walk together, to play. But Ashara Dayne’s whelp will always know he is no Stark, that he is here on sufferance, because otherwise he may think himself worthy of Winterfell. And she will not have her son threatened.

\---

He won’t be the Lord of Winterfell.

By the time Jon is born, Ashara already knows that Ned has married Catelyn Tully in his brother’s place, that their son is now a bastard. But not for long, if she has her way. Aran agrees that he will be a Dayne when she’s recovered and baby Jon is old enough to make the journey to Sunspear to have him legitimized. He will be in line for Starfall and possibly even wield Dawn after Arthur - what need will he have for the giant grey castle, the godswood and summer snows that Ned always talked about?

But then Ned comes to Starfall, and Aran would punch him in the face if he didn’t look half dead if he didn’t - if he wasn’t -

He carries a body, a babe, and Arthur’s sword.

Arthur is buried where the Tower of Joy once stood,  the cairn closest to what is left of the foundations, Ned tells them, and Aran sends men to collect his body so Arthur can be buried properly at Starfall. Lyanna Stark is dead too, after bearing a child who may be a princess or a royal bastard (Ned thinks Rhaegar married her in Northern fashion, justifying it by Targaryen tradition), a sickly child with silvery fuzz on her head and Stark-grey eyes.

Just like Ned’s. Just like Jon’s.

And Ned wants Jon. Ashara rages and screams, but even Aran cannot help her - a man has all the rights over his children, even in Dorne when the woman does not rule in her own right, and Dorne fought for the Targaryens. If Ned so chose, he could involve Robert Baratheon. They both know it. And so he takes her son, after she makes him swear that Jon will write to her when he is old enough, that his maester at Winterfell will write before that.

Looking at baby Shiera in Jon’s cradle, Ashara should want to smother the child, this last legacy of the destruction Rhaegar wrought on them all, but she can’t. Because the babe has her son’s eyes, shares blood with her little boy, and in any case did no wrong. Arthur died to protect her and they use his name to shield her.

It is all that’s left to do.  

\---

There will be another child.

It makes the healing wounds on her breasts and arms bearable, because Rhaella loves her children. Rhaegar... Oh, the hopes she had for her melancholy boy, all dashed to nothing. He was a little fool in the end, just like her grandfather. She's never forgiven King Aegon V for his order that she marry Aerys; she never would have been allowed to be with Bonifer but another man would have treated her gently.

Bonifer. He chose Maiden, Mother, and Crone when he could not have her. She wonders if he is any happier than she, deep down.

She knows he is lonelier, for at least she has Viserys. Her sweet, delicate boy, and it all rests on him now. He is eight years old and the rightful king, as she whispers to him. "As king, you must always watch over the brother or sister you will soon have. Guard the family."

It is what Aerys never knew, even before his madness. It is what Rhaegar forgot in his obsession with a prophecy that has haunted their family for a century.

And Rhaella senses she will not be there to protect her boy and the new babe.

Ser Willem tells her of his plan to flee to Essos, which is why, with her last strength, barely audible over the howling winds, she names her daughter Daenerys. The first Daenerys learned to thrive far from home; she wants her little girl to do the same.

 **  
**And then the darkness takes her.


End file.
